Various heated appliances are available for the drying and styling of hair including those that blow hot air onto the hair and those that contact the hair with a heated surface, such as hot curlers, curling irons and flat irons or flat straighteners. The styles that can be achieved by a heated surface device is limited by the shape of the surface and typically a different device is needed for each aspect of a hair style.
There have been previous appliances that combine straightening and curling functions in a single appliance either by providing detachable and interchangeable styling tools to a single barrel or by attempting to combine more than one shape on a single device. One such attempt is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,957,140 in which the blades are barrel and channel shaped in the inner portion (toward the hinge) and become flat in the end portions. Use of such a device could be inconvenient as a user would have to be careful not to place hair in the transition zone between the curved and flat portions of the blades. Such a user would also need to be very careful when using the inner, curling portion, not to touch and thus burn the hair or scalp with the protruding flat portions. A further disadvantage of such a device is that is has no internal heating mechanism and has to be heated by an external heating source so the temperature is uncontrolled and would decrease during styling.